Compressors in air conditioners are powered by a motor working as a drive source. The motor is driven by alternating-current (AC) power supplied from a power converter.
A typical power converter mainly includes a rectifier, a booster-type power factor corrector, and an inverter power converter, as disclosed in Patent Document 1. First, the rectifier rectifies an AC commercial voltage output from a commercial power source. The rectified voltage is boosted to a desired voltage and smoothed by the power factor corrector, so that the power factor of the voltage is corrected to improve. The voltage with the power factor corrected is supplied to the power converter. Using the voltage with the power factor corrected, the power converter generates AC power for driving the motor.